South Korea confirms US moving air defence systems to the Middle East

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung confirmed on Tuesday that the US planned to pull air defence systems from his country to wage war on Iran. 

“We oppose the withdrawal of some US air defence weapons used for our country’s military needs, but it is also a harsh reality that we cannot completely impose our opinion,” Lee Jae Myung told his cabinet.

The statement is the first public confirmation that the US has been forced to take critical air defence systems from East Asia to secure the Middle East after the US and Israel launched a war on Iran.

The Washington Post first reported the Pentagon was moving parts of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system from South Korea to the Middle East. 

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun reportedly said last week that the US was in talks with Seoul about redeploying Patriot air defence batteries from the country to the Middle East.

South Korea is a key US ally and military partner. Its long-time foe, North Korea, also possesses nuclear weapons, unlike Iran.

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South Korea is the US’s sixth-largest trading partner, with economic activity between the two countries far outstripping any economic links the US has with Israel, Turkey, or the Gulf states.

The US also has a mutual defence treaty with South Korea, unlike any other country in the Middle East.

South Korea would not be the first country the US has had to raid for defensive capabilities in response to Iranian missile and drone attacks.

Turkey said on Tuesday that an additional Patriot air defence system had been deployed to its Malatya province in the wake of two Iranian missile attacks.

Middle East Eye reported that the Iranian missiles may have been testing Turkish airspace to target a crucial Nato radar base in Malatya. The newly deployed Patriot systems were reportedly moved from Nato’s Ramstein base in Germany.

The decision to take air defence systems from South Korea underscores how stretched US capabilities are.

MEE revealed that the US has struggled to fill requests by its Gulf partners for air defence interceptors. Some Gulf analysts have questioned the value of US military bases as their countries are pummelled by Iran.

Ironically, the Trump administration entered office promising to end US “forever wars” in the Middle East.

Eldridge Colby, the under secretary of war for policy, made a name for himself advocating for reassessing security commitments in the Middle East so that the US was better positioned to compete with China, the world’s largest economy, widely regarded as Washington's only true superpower peer.